Sunday, August 29, 2010

I visited the site today and a lot of new activity to note. Before we get into that, I am now the proud owner of one of the Zippin Pippin t-shirts that are being sold to help raise money for the project. Check them out they look great!

Now back to the job site. The first thing I noticed is the beginnings of a fence are in place, right now just the poles are in place but there is a big pile of chain link that I'm sure will be up soon; future pictures will be a bit more challenging!

There are also some more parts and pieces starting to show up. Check out the pictures of the anchors that the wooden structure will be bolted to. If I'm correct the small pieces of wood bolted between the steel anchors right now are just to hold them in the proper orientation while they are being anchored into concrete. After the concrete sets these small blocks will be removed and the main columns of the coaster will be bolted into these. The small "L" shape on the bottom will be embedded in the concrete.

I walked the outside of the entire site where the perimeter of the fence will be set up and took a variety of pictures along the way to help give a feel for the overall size and scope of the site; check out the photo album by clicking on one of the pictures in the "Slideshow" link at the top right of the page for all of the pictures and captions.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Following the groundbreaking there was an announcement of a major donation in the effort to raise $600k to help fund the construction effort.

There is also an official website set up by the city. This website is tracking donations and includes ways individuals can donate; it appears to be a work in progress as many of the links aren't active yet but it appears people will be able to make on-line donations in the near future. Another cool feature is kids who donate a minimum of $5 will be given the opportunity to sign their name on the tallest "bent" (an engineering term for a framework placed across a structure to stiffen it) before it is raised into place.

The city also announced t-shirts are being sold to raise funds. I hope to have a t-shirt later today and to visit the construction site tomorrow. I'll post pictures of the t-shirt and the latest construction photos then.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

I made my first visit to the construction site today. Not much is visible at this point in time. There is some construction equipment on site and some very basic site prep work has started. The only on-site materials at this time is some pieces of rebar for the foundation work that should be underway soon.

It appears the roller coaster will start near the highest point of the giant slide just a little bit west northwest of that location. This aerial image from Google maps shows the assumed location...

The Picasa album linked to the right contains images with captions of the photos taken today. Each caption will include a date that corresponds to the date of the blog post.

Let me know if anyone has visited the site and has noticed something I missed or thinks some of my assumptions are incorrect.